Concert 4 – The shape of the wind, the shadow of time

  • Town Hall - Great Hall
  • 1119 8th Ave, Seattle WA 98101

    PROGRAM:
    HUCK HODGE The shape of the wind, the shadow of time for percussion soloist and ensemble (2019) – World Premiere
    KATE SOPER Now is Forever for soprano and chamber orchestra (2015)
    TANIA LEÓN Indígena (1991)

    The season will conclude with a world premiere percussion concerto by celebrated Seattle composer, Huck Hodge, entitled The shape of the wind, the shadow of time (commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation) and will feature the ensemble’s tour-de-force percussionist, Bonnie Whiting. The program will also include Now is Forever by Kate Soper, specially arranged for SMO, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Cuban composer Tania León‘s Indígena

    We are honored to present guest conductor Michael Lewanski, conductor of Chicago’s Ensemble Dal Niente, to lead this concert, as our co-artistic director Julia Tai was unable to attend rehearsals due to quarantine.

    SMO Single tickets: $25 General, $15 Seniors, $10 Students
    SMO Digital Stage Single Tickets: $15

    The performance is available on our Crowdcast Digital Stage until Friday, July 1.

    Safety Protocols:
    Beginning June 1, 2022,Town Hall Seattle no longer requires a proof of vaccination or negative PCR test for entry to events. Masking by all patrons, presenters, and employees remains required inside the venue, except while actively eating or drinking. Details about Town Hall Seattle’s Covid-19 policy can be found here.

    ABOUT OUR FEATURED COMPOSERS: 

    Huck Hodge, composer

    Composer Huck Hodge

    Huck Hodge is a composer of “harmonically fresh work”, “full of both sparkle and thunder” (New York Times). His music has been praised for its “immediate impact” (Chicago Tribune), its “clever, attractive, streamlined” qualities (NRC Handelsblad, Amsterdam) and its ability to “conjure up worlds of musical magic” with “power and charisma” (Gramophone Magazine, London). His musical collaborations include those with members of Ensemble Modern and the Berlin Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Orchestra of the League of Composers, the Aleph, ASKO/Schönberg, Dal Niente, Divertimento, SurPlus and Talea ensembles, the Afiara, Daedalus, JACK and Pacifica string quartets, and numerous other ensembles.

    His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and at numerous major festivals throughout the world — the New York Philharmonic Biennial, Berliner Festspiele, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Shanghai New Music Week, ISCM World Music Days, and many others.His published music is licensed and distributed by Alexander Street Press and Babel Scores (Paris). Recordings of his music appear on the New World and Albany record labels.​

    Hodge was educated at Columbia University and at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany where he studied with Fred Lerdahl, Tristan Murail, Marco Stroppa, and Georg Wötzer. His major awards include the Charles Ives Living, the largest music award conferred by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rome Prize, the Gaudeamus Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the American Composers Forum, the Barlow Endowment, Music at the Anthology, the Siemens Musikstiftung and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, among many others. Hodge is Professor and Chair of the Composition program at the University of Washington.

    Kate Soper, composer

    Composer Kate Soper – PC: Richard Burbridge

    Kate Soper is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer, performer, and writer. She has been hailed by The Boston Globe as “a composer of trenchant, sometimes discomfiting, power” and by The New Yorker for her “limpid, exacting vocalism, impetuous theatricality, and mastery of modernist style.” Soper has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters (The Virgil Thomson and Goddard Lieberson awards and the Charles Ives Scholarship), the Koussevitzky Foundation, Chamber Music America, the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund, the Music Theory Society of New York State, and ASCAP, and has been commissioned by ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, and Yarn/Wire. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Civitella Raineri Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Camargo Foundation, the Macdowell Colony, Tanglewood, Royaumont, and Domaine Forget, among others.

    Praised by the New York Times for her “lithe voice and riveting presence,” Soper performs frequently as a new music soprano. She has been featured as a composer/vocliast on the New York City-based MATA festival and Miller Theatre Composer Portraits series, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series, and the LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series. As a non-fiction and creative writer, she has been published by McSweeney’s Quarterly, Theory and Practice, the Massachusetts Review, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies.

    Soper is a co-director and performer for Wet Ink, a New York-based new music ensemble dedicated to seeking out adventurous music across aesthetic boundaries. She is the Iva Dee Hiatt Professor of Music at Smith College.

    Tania León, composer 

    Cuban born American composer Tania Leon, 1998. Photo by Jack Mitchell/Getty Images

    Tania León (b. Havana, Cuba) is highly regarded as a composer, conductor, educator and advisor to arts organizations. In 2021, her orchestral work Stride, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

    Recent commissions include works for New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Grossman Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, and pianist Ursula Oppens with Cassatt String Quartet. Appearances as guest conductor include Philharmonic Orchestra of Marseille, Gewandhausorchester, Orquesta Sinfonica de Guanajuato, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Cuba.

    Upcoming premieres feature commissions for the NewMusic USA Amplifying Voices Program, The Musical Fund Society in Philadelphia to celebrate their 200th anniversary, and for The Crossing chamber choir with Claire Chase, flutist, among others.

    A founding member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, León instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series, co-founded the American Composers Orchestra’s Sonidos de las Américas Festivals, was New Music Advisor to the New York Philharmonic, and is the founder/Artistic Director of the nonprofit and festival Composers Now.

    Her honors include the New York Governor’s Lifetime Achievement, awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the ASCAP Victor Herbert Award, among others. She also received a proclamation for Composers Now by New York City Mayor, and the MadWoman Festival Award in Music (Spain).

    León has received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from Colgate University, Oberlin and SUNY Purchase College, and served as U.S. Artistic Ambassador of American Culture in Madrid, Spain. A CUNY Professor Emerita, she was awarded a 2018 United States Artists Fellowship.